‘I have previously written on this blog and elsewhere about statutory interpretation and the rule of law. In the previous blog post I stated that the idea “that the courts will not allow the executive to escape their jurisdiction is well established as part of the rule of law” and referenced, inter alia, Anisminic Ltd v Foreign Compensation Commission [1969] 2 AC 147 (HL) to support this view.’

‘Some clients worry being “bamboozled by legal jargon” if they complain to their lawyers, a fear that can be borne out by responses that are “seeming calculated to ‘overwhelm’ or ‘intimidate’ the customer”, according to new research.’

‘Parliament on Thursday 14 September. But to digest it in full, one needs time, commitment, and coffee. It is not a straightforward read. It seeks to implement the GDPR in full and in Brexit-proof fashion, to plug the gaps that the GDPR requires member states to fill, and also to apply a GDPR-like regime to areas of data processing that are not covered by the GDPR itself. The Bill is of course liable to change in the coming months, but here are some observations and highlights in the meantime.’

‘Earlier this year in the US, a legal case revolved around the use of an Oxford comma. Not to be outdone, last month the Court of Appeal in England & Wales had to determine the meaning of the word ‘or’; in doing so, they embarked upon a semantic analysis of one of the most common words in the English language, flavoured by the Supreme Court’s most recent case on construction of contracts.’

‘Practical completion is a key concept in any construction project. It has a significant impact on a party’s rights and obligations, and represents a major milestone in the overall project timetable. Under the majority of construction projects, it marks the point at which the clock starts running for the overall transfer of risk from the contractor to the owner.’

‘The defendant local planning authority granted planning permission for the erection of a wind turbine on the farm of the interested party. The wind turbine was erected on the side of a hill the other side of which, about 1·5 km from the wind turbine, was a Grade II* listed building. Several scheduled monuments were also in the surrounding area, two of which were within two km of the site. The claimant, a local resident, applied for judicial review of the council’s decision to grant planning permission. The judge dismissed the claim, determining that (i) the planning authority was not required to consult the Welsh ministers under article 14 of the Town and Country Planning (Development Management Procedure) (Wales) Order 2012 as the requirement to consult on development “likely to affect the site of a scheduled monument” in paragraph k of Schedule 4 to the Order applied only to development likely to have some direct physical effect on the monument, not also to development likely to have visual effects on the setting of the monument, and (ii) the planning authority had not erred in failing to perform the duty in section 66(1) of the Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) Act 1990, which required it to have special regard to the desirability of preserving the setting of a listed building when deciding whether to grant planning permission for development which affected a listed building or its setting.’

“The visual vocabulary of courts – rooted in Babylonian, Egyptian, Classical, and Renaissance iconography – provides a transnational symbol of government, and courts have become obligatory facets of good governance. Consider the image of two women: one with scales, sword and blindfold; the other, Prudence, regarding herself in a mirror. Justice was once regularly shown with Prudence as well as Fortitude and Temperance, the four cardinal virtues. We know this imagery of justice because we have been taught it. Rulers regularly link themselves to the virtue Justice as they seek legitimacy for the laws that they make and enforce.”

“The US and the UK – so the saying goes – are ‘two countries divided by a common language’. The same could be said for lawyers and non-lawyers. Lawyers talk in a language which must seem like gobbledygook to everyone else. Take the word ‘tort’. Any law student knows that it means ‘civil wrong’. But ask a non-lawyer to give you a sentence with the word ‘tort’ in it and they might as well say: ‘I tort I tore a puddy cat!’ for all the sense it will mean to them.”